Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[Nilesh Oak]

RajeshA and Shiv Saar,

Changing gears (but not the topic - language), I have a booklet created by my friend, original thinker along the lines of Vartak, Einstein, Newton and kepler. So expect flight of fancy, joy of speculation and wonderful research. I do want you to have a look at it. I have deliberately taken a break from tautological science of Linguistics. My head starts hurting in a hurry.

<snip>

He is also one of the many collaborators, along with me and others, on Sullivan Code (SIVC script decipherment).

Nilesh Oak ji,

ABCD or ABRACADABRA? I loved his hypothesis! And it is really breaking new ground.

I had linked Wim Borsboom's paper in "Link Language for India" Thread about a week ago!

RajeshA ji,

You are very resourceful person, and efficient.

Why am I always late to the party?

[RajeshA]

Nilesh Oak ji,

the link was in GDF, in a somewhat less visited thread.

Just as other Indic contributions to the World have been hidden and lost, this contribution too needs to be given focus, perhaps on this thread itself, so it is good that you brought it up here.

[Supratik]

One needs access to read this nature-paper... The gist of the content is, most of Indians since 40,000 YBP belong to a genetic group which the authors call ANI (Ancestral North Indian). They Ancestral South Indian (ASI) group, which might be present in India before ANI replaced it, is now found only in some tribes living in some islands of Andaman and Nicobar. Rest of mainland India is populated by ANI stock for at least past 40,000 years.

For most of this time, the ANI stock has been mostly "endogamous" and there is not much influx of outside genes seen in resident ANI population of Indian subcontinent.

That is not correct. The Indian populations they studied from among North Indians and South Indians of different castes are a mixture of ANI and ASI. ANI and CEU form a clade. ASI is more ancient than ANI. ASI is not present outside the subcontinent and there are no pure ASI outside A&N islands. The mixing is ancient - later paper shows that it is around 8000-12000 yrs ago. So the genetic data does not suggest a mass migration around the period when the Aryan invasion is supposed to have happened according to AIT proponents. They did not find a difference between tribe and caste suggesting that tribes became castes. After the initial mixing there is very little gene flow suggesting that the castes have been endogamous.

[shiv]

Shiv ji,

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 08365.html

India has been underrepresented in genome-wide surveys of human variation. We analyse 25 diverse groups in India to provide strong evidence for two ancient populations, genetically divergent, that are ancestral to most Indians today. One, the ‘Ancestral North Indians’ (ANI), is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans, whereas the other, the ‘Ancestral South Indians’ (ASI), is as distinct from ANI and East Asians as they are from each other. By introducing methods that can estimate ancestry without accurate ancestral populations, we show that ANI ancestry ranges from 39–71% in most Indian groups, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speakers. Groups with only ASI ancestry may no longer exist in mainland India. However, the indigenous Andaman Islanders are unique in being ASI-related groups without ANI ancestry. Allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, reflecting strong founder effects whose signatures have been maintained for thousands of years owing to endogamy. We therefore predict that there will be an excess of recessive diseases in India, which should be possible to screen and map genetically.

The findings are controversial, especially with the conclusions with just 132 samples from 25 population groups.

A very interesting blog with a guy who decimated the R1a1 ==Aryan Invasion theory has a commentary on this paper too. I read it by sheer coincidence just 2 days ago.

There is a genetic gradient where there is no strict Eurasian==high caste correlation. Low caste north Indians have a higher ANI genes than high caste south Indians, so the results merely support many migrations over millennia which is well known. The paper is from 2009 and IIRC came earlier than the 2011 R1a1 paper discussed on here earlier

Indians as hybrids (a.k.a Aryan invasion in the house!)

In the table above there is a reference to the proportion of ANI and ASI in each Indian group. One question you might ask: how do you estimate the proportions of ancestry from groups which you don’t have any information about because they no longer exist?
<snip>
I’m skeptical. Obviously the Ind-Aryans had to arrive physically, but these sorts of nomadic populations tend to quickly dominate and culturally assimilate sedentarists. In the case of the Hungarians and Turks they even imposed their language upon the natives, with only marginal genetic impact. The paper itself points to the likelihood of a complex history of periodic, and perhaps continuous, gene flow. Two ancient populations mixing is what economists would term a “stylized fact,” good enough to get some points across, but not to be confused for reality.

What about the idea of foundings and subsequent endogamy explaining the high Fst? 2,500 years ago Herodotus already reported that India was the most populous nation in the world (he did not know of China). It isn’t as if the Indo-Aryans arrived in the New World, where the natives died off so that they could enter into a major demographic expansionary phase. That being said, India’s population did grow over time as cultures pushed east with better tools (e.g., iron axes), and cut down the local forests. To really test drive this model you need more 132 individuals from 25 populations

In another commentary on the same paper
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/gen ... etics.html

The authors propose that today's groups descend in varying proportions from two ancient (and no longer existing) populations, which they call "ancestral North Indian" and "ancestral South Indian". I'm always skeptical of mixture models, especially when the putative source populations no longer exist. There are just too many ways that structured migration or dispersal can lead to the appearance of mixture. <snip>So I don't accept this ancestral division, certainly not at face value. It does seem plausible that West Asian (and thereby European-related) genes have introgressed into India over time, perhaps in association with the growth of high-density agricultural populations. Maybe some of this gene flow occurred under the influence of positive selection, but processes of elite dominance and differential growth may have been sufficient.
<snip>
Some of the common ancestors of some living Europeans and some Indians were probably speakers of proto-Indo-European speakers. But we can easily refute the hypothesis that all of the common ancestors did so -- some of those common ancestors lived more than 40,000 years ago, as is well-known from the mtDNA chronology. The tree model with complete isolation does not explain the data. So as simple as it is -- and as well-used by Cavalli-Sforza and others -- it would be better to use a more accurate model.

[RajeshA]

A very interesting blog with a guy who decimated the R1a1 ==Aryan Invasion theory has a commentary on this paper too. I read it by sheer coincidence just 2 days ago.

There is a genetic gradient where there is no strict Eurasian==high caste correlation. Low caste north Indians have a higher ANI genes than high caste south Indians, so the results merely support many migrations over millennia which is well known. The paper is from 2009 and IIRC came earlier than the 2011 R1a1 paper discussed on here earlier

Indians as hybrids (a.k.a Aryan invasion in the house!)

It seems this Razib Khan is actually really a Paki, and no matter how far he may educate himself you can't really get the Paki out of a Paki. Actually any Paki who makes it, is really a more dangerous Paki, for then he gets a bigger platform to espouse his racism. A Paki needs to feel superior in some way. Period. If religion doesn't work, as it is being thrashed everywhere, then how about race. A Paki's only dream is to somehow prove he is better than a Indian, and basically he makes South Indians the target.

One would wonder this Razib Khan was attracted towards Population Genetics. On his blog, he would make it a priority to respond to any Indian comment, of course rubbishing it. Why? Because that is how he gets his kick, that's how every Paki gets a kick! Then professionalism, objectivity is set aside, assuming that it ever plays a part, and only getting one better of the Indian takes center stage. I consider him somebody one needs to look out for.

However, there are many Americans who have also got behind his racist views.
miffed at the New Yorker, Steven Pinker calls for backup from racist Razib Khan

I believe different groups probably have different aptitudes (not moral inferiority or superiority)-and the axiom of equality-that all groups have the exact same tendencies as our common evolutionary heritage, could cause serious problems when applied to public policy"

From Comments from Indians as hybrids (a.k.a Aryan invasion in the house!)

in any case, i actually quoted the paper you know a lot of what they say there is totally obfuscatory and no doubt playing to the prejudices of the indian audience. west eurasians are probably better representatives of “ancient north indians” than north indians themselves. so where does one assume those “ancient north indians” came from?

this is like brazilian scientists letting their audience think that portugal was settled from brazil. they know it’s totally implausible, but i guess it’s politic.

That perhaps the indo-european language group did originate in South Asia.

no.

He puts up a graphic

Next are two charts which shows Indians, Europeans, and Chinese. In the first the PCA was originally constructed with Europeans & Chinese, and the Indians were projected onto it using the variation found in the first two groups. In the second case, Indians and Chinese were used to construct the PCA, and Europeans projected.

What you see is that Europeans are all equally related to Indians, but Indians exhibit a gradient of relationship to Europeans. That is, there is no European group which in particular resembles Indians via the connection with ANI; the distance between all European groups and ANI seems roughly equal. The Indians vary in their relationship to Europeans because they vary in their proportion of ANI.

Actually the genetic relationship between Ancestral North Indians and Europeans is easy to explain - Proto-Europeans migrated out of India when the ANI-ASI mixture among North Indians was far less, that is possibly 7000-8000 years or before - the mixture gradating downwards as one moves Northwards. When the groups moved out, they did not take much/any ASI with them.

The thing to note is that there would really be very few small groups in Afghanistan, Nuristanis, Chitral, etc. may be, who really may be closest to ANI, but all other groups which have ANI markers are "impure", especially the Europeans, because they assimilated a lot of other people on their migratory path from India to Europe.

Any racism based on ANI, including from Pakistanis, not to speak of Europeans, would be baseless, because if ANI are considered Aryans, there aren't really that many pure-blood Aryans left anymore in the world, and certainly not in Pakistan or in Europe.

In fact all the "Syeds" and Turk-prodigy in Pakistani Elite class, their claim on any ANI purity would be even less! Pakis are no Aryans!

[member_22872]

A very interesting blog with a guy who decimated the R1a1 ==Aryan Invasion theory has a commentary on this paper too. I read it by sheer coincidence just 2 days ago.

shiv garu, could you please post the link to that article if you could? are you referring to Razib Khan's blog? I suppose not.

[Supratik]

Actually the papers are deeply problematic for AIT/AMT proponents because the timescales of ANI presence in the subcontinent predates by thousands of years many of their theories like BMAC, Andronovo, etc. Since ANI were clearly Caucasoid it is not impossible that migration occurred out from a region comprising present they NW India, Pak, eastern Afghn prior to significant mixing with ASI.

The difference btween NI and SI and FC and BC is not that big that we can definitively deduce racial theories from them.

[Nilesh Oak]

Timing of Ramayana

Here are three key existing proposals for timing of Ramayana from those many sources.

The specific dates below are proposed for Day of Rama-Janma (Rama's birth).

Please donot spend time if any of these dates make sense. They may and they may not.

I am looking for origin/researcher/additional details (anything and everything anyone of you can find on this first proposal where source is unknown.

This is what I know. I found this off of a blog where someone had posted it. I tried to contact that person but was not successful. The description has few references to Tamil calendar/calendric terms (i.e. the original researcher might have used Tamil calendar in determining timing of Ramayana). So my guess is this researcher would be of Tamil background (or where Tamil calendar is used.. Kerala, Andhrapradhesh, Karnataka? I don't know .. am just providing what could be the case)

Appreciate your help,

(1) Source unknown -17 Jan 10205 BC

(2) P V Vartak - 4/5 Dec 7323 BC
(I have his Wastav Ramayana, so I am set)

(3) Pushkar Bhatnagar - 10 Jan 5114 BC (I have good info, however if someone has PDF of his book -Ramayana Era?, that would be helpful)

[shiv]

Folks please don't insult me by imagining that I can't recognise Pakiness. I think you need to read what Razib Khan writes before dismissing him. He does a better job of demolishing the R1A1 hypothesis than anyone else I have read, and even the link above does a better review of the ASI/ANI data than a very Indian letter that I saw but did not link. I will post that too now that we are comparing Pakiness with Indian ness and you can see what the Paki writes versus what the Indian writes.

This will be the second time (maybe third) that I am linking this piece by Razib on this thread. Please read the text and not just the name.

This is what I had posted earlier, By Razib
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 9#p1302469

More problems for R1a1==AIT people
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/11/r1a1-a ... urasia.php

Initially, researchers such as Spencer Wells assumed that R1a1 signaled the arrival of Indo-Aryans to the Indian subcontinent, its frequencies decline in a northwest-to-southeast gradient, and from high to low castes. In Europe the modal frequencies are among Slavic groups, with a high representation among Germanic-speakers. The frequency of R1a1 declines sharply in Western and Southern Europe. It is very common in Central Asia as well as eastern Iran and Afghanistan. One parsimonious explanation would be that R1a1 spread with Kurgan males, along with Indo-European languages, on the order of 4-5,000 years ago.

There is a problem with this model though. One of the new papers reiterates the finding that the coalescence of the European and South Asian lineages is on the order of 10,000 years ago: Separating the post-Glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a (R1a1 is the dominant clade within R1a). A second paper reports the finding that R1a1 is very diverse in India, indicating deep time depth: The Indian origin of paternal haplogroup R1a1* substantiates the autochthonous origin of Brahmins and the caste system. For both R1a1 &"Ancestral North Indians" (ANI) in Reich et al.: the frequency seems intuitively way too high among tribal populations, even in South India. Remember that the low bound for ANI was ~40%. R1a1 is found at frequencies as high as 25% or so among some South Indian tribals. If this lineage arrived with the Indo-Aryans it is peculiar that it is found in such high frequencies in populations which were marginal and isolated from the dominant non-Indo-Aryan populations of South India. Back to Europe, here is a section from the abstract of the first paper:

• Conversely, marker M458 has a significant frequency in Europe, exceeding 30% in its core area in Eastern Europe and comprising up to 70% of all M17 chromosomes present there. The diversity and frequency profiles of M458 suggest its origin during the early Holocene and a subsequent expansion likely related to a number of prehistoric cultural developments in the region. Its primary frequency and diversity distribution correlates well with some of the major Central and East European river basins where settled farming was established before its spread further eastward. Importantly, the virtual absence of M458 chromosomes outside Europe speaks against substantial patrilineal gene flow from East Europe to Asia, including to India, at least since the mid-Holocene.

[shiv]

It seems this Razib Khan is actually really a Paki, and no matter how far he may educate himself you can't really get the Paki out of a Paki.

Looks like you can't get the Paki out of Indians either. Here is the Indian on the ASI/ANI paper about which Razib has a fair review

http://suvratk.blogspot.in/2009/09/gene ... paper.html
by Suvrat Kher

The Indian Press has made a hash of the finding. For example they have only reported those parts of the study that deal with the kinship among Indians and have stressed that castes and tribes cannot be differentiated or that there is no divide between the Aryans (roughly north Indians) and Dravidians (south Indians). That is all true for average relatedness. But the study also clearly points out that there are genetic differences between north and south Indians and between upper and lower caste in terms of the degree of relatedness to Eurasians. North Indians and upper castes are more closely related to Eurasians. North Indian upper castes have even more Eurasian ancestry. This part was ignored by the press.

But I can't blame the press entirely. The scientists who gave interviews to the press didn't mention this. They wimped out on reporting this potential inflammatory and politically incorrect finding. This is just poor and irresponsible science outreach on part of the scientists. How can you ignore a finding that is staring out at you from the very paper you are talking about? The press may be guilty of not digging in but it was just reporting what the scientists told them.

Now if you can bring yourself to read the Paki go back as see what he says about this exact same topic of "relatedness" to Eurasia.

I would call Suvrat Kher a Paki. Razib may be Indian actually. And judging by his colour he is SDRE complexioned - ?South. He has done a fantastic job of dissecting that R1a1 paper. Please read the text carefully- at least what I have posted above this post. I can imagine a South Indian Muslim wanting to demolish AIT as much as any of us especially if he was educated enough to understand genetics.

[RajeshA]

Wikipedia Article: Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia

Publication Date: September 24, 2009
By David Reich, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Nick Patterson, Alkes L. Price & Lalji Singh
Reconstructing Indian population history: Nature

It is tempting to assume that the population ancestral to ANI and CEU spoke 'Proto-Indo-European', which has been reconstructed as ancestral to both Sanskrit and European languages, although we cannot be certain without a date for ANI–ASI mixture.

Publication Date: Oct 12, 2011
By P. Moorjani, N. Patterson, P. Govindaraj, Lalji Singh, K. Thangaraj, D. Reich
Estimating a date of mixture of ancestral South Asian populations

major ANI-ASI mixture occurred in the ancestors of both northern and southern Indians 1,200-3,500 years ago, overlapping the time when Indo-European languages first began to be spoken in the subcontinent

Publication Date: December 12, 2008
By WS Watkins, R Thara, BJ Mowry, Y Zhang, DJ Witherspoon, W Tolpinrud, MJ Bamshad, S Tirupati, R Padmavati, H Smith, D Nancarrow, C Filippich and LB Jorde
Genetic variation in South Indian castes: evidence from Y-chromosome, mitochondrial, and autosomal polymorphisms

The historical record documents an influx of Vedic Indo-European-speaking immigrants into northwest India starting at least 3500 years ago. These immigrants spread southward and eastward into an existing agrarian society dominated by Dravidian speakers. With time, a more highly-structured patriarchal caste system developed. India is now broadly characterized by Indo-European (e.g. Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi) speaking populations found in the central and northern regions and by Dravidian (e.g. Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada) speaking populations in the southern and southeastern regions.

... Although other interpretations may be possible, our data are consistent with a model in which nomadic populations from northwest and central Eurasia intercalated over millennia into an already complex, genetically diverse set of subcontinental populations. As these populations grew, mixed, and expanded, a system of social stratification likely developed in situ, spreading to the Indo-Gangetic plain, and then southward over the Deccan plateau. A strong patrilineal social structure, accompanied by a developing practice of caste endogamy, may have contributed to an asymmetric apportioning of Y-chromosome, autosomal, and to a lesser extent, mtDNA lineages.

Publication Date: February 23, 2010
By Partha P. Majumdar
The Human Genetic History of South Asia

Central Asian populations are supposed to have been major contributors to the Indian gene pool, particularly to the northern Indian gene pool, and the migrants had supposedly moved into India through what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan. Using mitochondrial DNA variation data collated from various studies, we have shown that populations of Central Asia and Pakistan show the lowest coefficient of genetic differentiation with the north Indian populations, a higher differentiation with the south Indian populations, and the highest with the northeast Indian populations. Northern Indian populations are genetically closer to Central Asians than populations of other geographical regions of India... . Consistent with the above findings, a recent study using over 500,000 biallelic autosomal markers has found a north to south gradient of genetic proximity of Indian populations to western Eurasians. This feature is likely related to the proportions of ancestry derived from the western Eurasian gene pool, which, as this study has shown, is greater in populations inhabiting northern India than those inhabiting southern India. In general, the Central Asian populations are genetically closer to the higher-ranking caste populations than to the middle- or lower-ranking caste populations... . Among the higher-ranking caste populations, those of northern India are, however, genetically much closer than those of southern India. Phylogenetic analysis of Y-chromosomal data collated from various sources yielded a similar picture. Higher-ranking caste populations have been the torch-bearers of the Hindu caste system that was formalized by the Indo-European immigrants. It is likely, therefore, that there was a greater proportion of admixture between higher-ranking caste populations and Indo-Europeans. The fact that high-ranked caste populations inhabiting southern India do not exhibit as much affinity with central Asian populations as those of northern India may be explained by the recent finding that the south Indian, Dravidian speaking, populations may have admixed with north Indian populations bearing ancestral signatures of the western Eurasian gene pool more recently.

Within India, consistent with social history, extant populations inhabiting northern regions show closer affinities with Indo-European speaking populations of central Asia that those inhabiting southern regions. Extant southern Indian populations may have been derived from early colonizers arriving from Africa along the southern exit route. The higher-ranked caste populations, who were the torch-bearers of Hindu rituals, show closer affinities with central Asian, Indo-European speaking, populations. ..

As one can infer from all this Wikipedia is full of quotations from Genetic Research which give the impression that it was all Aryan Invasion/Migration from Central Asia.

There is one last line which claims otherwise

The genetic affinities of both the ancestry components are incompatible with substantial gene flow into the region during Max Mueller’s purported Indo-Aryan invasion 3,500 years ago

That is from the 2011 paper, with a broken link!

Wikipedia is now massively being used to propagate the AIT, in each and every article it is always AIT. This too is a bastion that one needs conquering.

[Nilesh Oak]

I presume esteemed members of this forum have read 'Out of Eden' by Stephen Oppenheimer.

It is few years old, however still a good book to get grounded on gene flow, direction, possible timing. And then one can start placing knowledge from latesed genetics pool against the background (agreeing, disagreeing, suggesting alternate) of his summary in the book. You may treat his book as review paper of gene researcher written in whatever year it was published.

[RajeshA]

(3) Pushkar Bhatnagar - 10 Jan 5114 BC (I have good info, however if someone has PDF of his book -Ramayana Era?, that would be helpful)

Some resources here

[member_22872]

Nilesh garu, Oppenheimer's book "Real Eve" is later book than "Out of Eden"?

Rajesh garu, I think knowledge about AIT as something fabricated if it remains limited among Indians will not serve to undermine the theory and later replace it. Wiki is widely read and is also plays a legendary role as an encyclopaedia, I too observed that all the pages concerning Rg Veda to R1a, AIT proponents edited entries to make it seem like that is the fact and truth. If unopposed, even if we can know for certain AIT is fiction, will have no point, better soon than later that too when it is referred to by tens of thousands per day for fact checking.

[RajeshA]

shiv saar,

the two papers from Rizab Khan [1] [2] are only two months apart, so I can't imagine too big a change in his thinking in those two months. However his first blog entry coincides with the date the paper was released. So may be he did give it a second thought.

I still have to study your link. In the end he seems to trying to give alternative explanations, though I agree he is quite honest with what the paper proposes.

I'll have to have a 2nd look at him!

The main issue that is confusing is the diversity of R1a1 in South Asia. A first order model going from just this data would be that R1a1 derives from India, and spread to the Eurasian plain. But Reich et al. show data that imply little likelihood of South Asian contribution to European ancestry. The only possibility would be if ANI and ASI were totally separated when a branch of ANI left South Asia for the Eurasian plain, and which point the process of admixture between ANI and ASI began. Another possibility is that the distribution of R1a1 in Eurasia is a palimpsest. Recent work in ancient DNA is suggesting that inferring past distributions from contemporary ones may lead us astray. It could be that R1a1 was once far more diverse in Europe and Central Asia, but that subsequent demographic events eliminated most of that diversity, while such events did not occur in Europe. Y chromosomal lineages may be particularly likely to be wiped out by the expansion of new tribes as old elites are killed or marginalized. The current distribution of a particular branch of R1a1 in Europe, associated in particular with Slavs, may be an expansion of the lineage which managed to survive elimination at some point in the mid-Holocene.

Though do note I put little weight in my speculations. It seems rather confusing. But since I was asked....

The explanation in blue is what I mentioned earlier. He is fully aware of it. Should also be considering that he works in the field.

He is offering the red part as an alternative.

But he refuses to take the position (in blue) that ANI migrated out of India. He simply says he is confused.

[Nilesh Oak]

Nilesh garu, Oppenheimer's book "Real Eve" is later book than "Out of Eden"?

Venug Garu,

You may be right. May be difference of few years- less than 5 years. His books (Eden in the east, and out of eden ) were good, except in his first book (Eden in the east) he did great job but blindly and foolishly accepted AIT. It did not hurt him much, unless person reading was knowledgeble about AIT and could see how that patch appeared odd and did not gel well with everythign else he was saying.

Out of Eden is pretty impressive. M17 is of relevance from OIT point of view.

(Std. Disclaimer: I belong to 'Multiregionalist' camp, but unless I am going to do some original work, I am not for hand waveing and dismissing Stephen Oppenheimer. I did not have an opportunity to read his 'Real Eve' and also go down 'Africa' as origin hypothesis even 2 levels down.. My goal is to go 20 levels down.. one day)

[RajeshA]

venug ji,

we would indeed have to mobilize and declare a crusade on Wikipedia and try to change the content there. However we would need some good publications we could refer to. We would perhaps not be getting too many references from scientific papers, but hopefully we can link books there. Also we would have to offer detailed explanations. Perhaps at the beginning it would be sufficient we one could transform the content of any pro-AIT article as two-theory based - OIT and AIT.

It will be important that before we really take on the history articles, we should get the upper hand on the science articles. It is also important we get to edit the more high-profile articles like "Aryans", "Swastika", etc.

[Supratik]

please take blogs and wiki with a bucket of salt when discussing scientific data. Majumder and some others have tried hard fpr over a decade to prove that there was a racial basis to caste stratification. I am not sure how well accepted these findings are among the scientific community.


Re: the kher guy - many upper caste people find great satisfaction in the AIT because a) it gives them a sense of racial superiority and b) it gives them some equality to the perceived superiority of the white race and he hopes he will find some respect and recognition from the white man because he is almost white.

[Dipanker]

I would call Suvrat Kher a Paki. Razib may be Indian actually. And judging by his colour he is SDRE complexioned - ?South. He has done a fantastic job of dissecting that R1a1 paper. Please read the text carefully- at least what I have posted above this post. I can imagine a South Indian Muslim wanting to demolish AIT as much as any of us especially if he was educated enough to understand genetics.

I think I read it on his website that he was a Bangladeshi, I am pretty sure.

[RajeshA]

Re: the kher guy - many upper caste people find great satisfaction in the AIT because a) it gives them a sense of racial superiority and b) it gives them some equality to the perceived superiority of the white race and he hopes he will find some respect and recognition from the white man because he is almost white.

Supratik ji,

Without trying to be boastful or wishing to claim any superiority, the fact is that

India is Civilization Prime!

Africans may be Mankind Prime, but India is most certainly Civilization Prime. India has given the world - Speech, Writing, Mythology, Philosophy, Mathematics, Astronomy, Medicine,

... and Domestication of many animals and 1st Cultivation of several plant species.

Perhaps that insight would nudge people like kher and others to see themselves in a different light!

[brihaspati]

Had a very brief and quick look piqued by the astronomical discussion: interested people can check this out in greater details perhaps -

(1) my software indicates that Sirius would be rising just before the sun and close to the ecliptic-galactic crossover point around 19000 (19270-329) ybp. That also implies both Canis constellations would rise close at sunrise in an approximate central north India long-lat - around Julian/siderial mid-March.

(2) But the seasonal crawl - also implies that this would be the expected time of Monsoon beginning then [insolation forcing].

The data points that I remembered and hence I looked the astronomical bit up is the fact that
(a) first noted global level melt-water rise indication is around 19,000 ybp.
(b) 19,000 ybp is taken to be a turning point for insolation increase and beginning of the gradual strengthening of the monsoon [the higher resolution data indicates iniensity peaks at around 16000 ybp and 13000 ybp supporting the 3000 y lag theory].

The varsha == year [as well as precipiation] makes sense only in the monsoon sense, and could have been noted at that period as also perhaps a significant change from the previous aridity of the 21,000 - 19,000 ybp range. Some people have arbitrarily set "spring" as Vedic year start - and used Garga's shloka to set Pleiades rise in the 4400 ybp range. But "varsha" makes no sense in that context.


Thus there could indeed be some significance in verse on ribhus - but the period is much older then than now anticipated and later than 26,000.

[shiv]

I need help from someone who knows what to do with PERL scripts. The link is here
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/quantmethods/

I want to run the script below and compute the "distance" between Sanskrit and 80 other Indo-European languages in terms of cognate words

Specifically I refer to this:

6. Historical Linguistics

Download zip
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/quan ... istics.zip
Download rar
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/quan ... istics.rar

File included in archive:
Script: A script that draws Figure 6.1
Data: Dyen et al.'s (1984) distance matrix for 84 Indo-European languages based on the percentage of cognate words between languages.
Data: A (rather arbitrary) subset of the Dyen et al. (1984) data coded as input to the Phylip program "pars".
Data: IE-lists.txt: A version of the Dyen et al. word lists that is readable in the scripts below.
Script: make_dist: This perl script tabulates all of the letters used in the Dyen et al. word lists."
Script: get_IE_distance: This perl script implements the "spelling distance" metric that was used to calculate distances between words in the Dyen et al. list.
Script: make_matrix: Another perl script. This one takes the output of get_IE_distance and writes it back out as a matrix that R can easily read.
Data: A distance matrix produced from the spellings of words in the Dyen et al. (1984) dataset.
Data: Distance matrix for eight Bantu languages from the Tanzanian Language Survey.
Data: A phonetic distance matrix of Bantu languages from Ladefoged, Glick & Criper (1971).
Data: The TLS Bantu data arranged as input for phylogenetic parsimony analysis using the Phylip program pars.

[Arjun]

Interesting paper published a few weeks back, that drives a bunch of more nails into a dying AMT coffin: There is no scientific basis for the Aryan Invasion Theory

[RajeshA]

Above Paper

Published on July 25, 2012
By T.R.S. Prasanna
There is no scientific basis for the Aryan Invasion Theory

T.R.S. Prasanna has previously published other papers as well on the subject.

T. R. S. Prasanna is in the
Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science,
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay,
Mumbai, India

[shiv]

Interesting paper published a few weeks back, that drives a bunch of more nails into a dying AMT coffin: There is no scientific basis for the Aryan Invasion Theory

Thanks. Another excellent archivable work

[RajeshA]

Considering that we are looking at Indian Monsoons and the Indian Calendar, here is a link

Published Sep 08, 2007
By Francis Zimmermann
Monsoon in Traditional Culture

It is a detailed academic paper. For more check here.

[RajeshA]

Timing of Ramayana

I am looking for origin/researcher/additional details (anything and everything anyone of you can find on this first proposal where source is unknown.

Nilesh Oak ji,

1) Often in many Yahoo groups there is a lot of debate, often among people who are very close to the given topics. Here is one debate:

Dating the Ramayana Period @IndiaArchaeology

Whatever date you pronounce, you might as well used to the kind of criticism you'll be subjected to by the AIT-Sepoys. Check a gentleman called A.K. Kaul. You may also like to get in touch with Sunil K. Bhattacharjya to get input for your book.

2) This is another proposal by Anand Sharan. He says date of birth is March 4, 3347 BC.

Anand Sharan is a Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

3) Here some abstracts from Pushkar Bhatnagar's 2004 book, "Dating the Era of Lord Ram"!

4) Sri Lankans also seem to be interested in this issue.

Ramayana Trail in Lanka

A certain Buddhist priest Kahattewela Chandrajothi thero/theoro also seems to be favoring a date 7000 YBP. Here is one of his videos.

5) Another professional looking site is Ramayana - The Historicity of Ramayana. It has an articles section. It is however a bit over the top.

[RajeshA]

Published in August, 2009
By Michel Danino
Landmarks of Science in Early India

[ManishH]

Certain inquiry about verses from RV

1. 1.161.11

Lets see how originally the verse is in sanskrit

सुषुप्वांस ऋभवस्तद पृच्छता गोह्य क इदं नो अबूबुधत् |
श्वानं बस्तो बोधयितारमब्रवीत् सम्वत्सर इदमद्या व्यख्यत ||

Now, the word Basto (बस्तो) is vibhakti of basta (बस्त).. I do not know why is it translated as "goat" when the word is meant as "Sun" (soorya). All traditional translations of this verse translate Basta as Sun and not goat. Yes, Basta also means goat, but it also means sun. And looking at the context here, lets try to see how the meaning of this Rchaa becomes if we take meaning of this word as Sun.

my attempted translation (perhaps Manishji can correct me here)

Oh Rbhus!!, You asked Surya (basta/ बस्त - sun) who awakened us from sleep? Then Surya replied, it was "Shvaana" (dog) who awakened you. It is year today.

I think the padpāṭha should be used for any attempted translation:

suṣupvāṃsaḥ | ṛbhavaḥ | tat | apṛcchata | agohya | kaḥ | idam | naḥ | abūbudhat | śvānam | bastaḥ | bodhayitāram | abravīt | saṃvatsare | idam | adya | vi | akhyata // RV_1,161.13 //<BR>

When the Sun is already called 'agoha' in the 1st pada, why call it basta. It's a rare word; so I looked elsewhere for anatomically clearer references. I found one in Atharvaveda, I see that it clearly refers to the hornless (tūparā) goat (basta)

(AVŚ_11,9[11].22c) tamasā ye ca tūparā atho bastābhivāsinaḥ |<BR>

If you have a reference that shows it more clearly referring to the Sun, please do point out.

There's no denying that the Goat and the Dog are all symbolic references. But in absence of clarity in commentaries, one cannot say they are asterisms. That's just speculation. Eg. another speculative judgment would be to call them as names of clans.

Now RV 4-33-7 (again with pratyaya solved, to the best of my meager knowledge)

द्वादश दयून् यद् अगोह्यस्य आतिथ्ये रणन् ऋभवः ससन्तः
सुक्षेत्र अकृण्वन् अनयन्त सिन्धुन् धन्वः अतिष्ठन् ओषधिः निम्नं आपः

Rbhus rested and enjoyed hospitality (aatithye) in 12 sections of sky (Dyu) of that unconcealed (Agohya) one (unconcealed one is Sun), then moved on making rumbling noises (Ranan रणन्) to make barren lands (dhanvah) fertile (Sukshetra), producing food and herbs (Oshadhi), causing waters (aapah) and rivers (Sindhu) come (flow) downwards.

Clearly, Rbhu is "cloud".. Rbhus move with rumbling noise, convert barren lands into fertile fields, cause water to flow down and rivers as well, and make plants grow all over the places. this is clearly depiction of monsoon.

The ṛbhu-s facilitate rain, but if every RV deity which facilitates rain were to be interpreted as beginning of monsoon, we'll have to include many other deities too. I'll do the same juvenile archaeo-astronomy exercise with one such deity Indra ...

1. Establish that Indra represents the cloud

RV_04.026.02.2 aham apo anayaṃ vāvaśānā mama devāso anu ketam āyan<BR>
I led the loud-roaring waters and the Gods according to my wish. After all the cloud is the bearer of loud-roaring water right ? And all references to clouds are surely beginning of monsoon. And Indian new year ofcourse begins with monsoon. Good so far.

2. Now pick up random animals mentioned in Indra hymns and call them asterisms in the sky...

RV_07.018.17.1{27} ādhreṇa cit tad vekaṃ cakāra siṃhyaṃ cit petvenā jaghāna
(with the ram he killed the lion)

Ok. so this looks like the lion being killed (must be Leo setting on the western horizon) and Aries up in the sky. Call in Nilesh ji and I'm sure he'll feed 1. and 2. into the planetarium software to give an eye-popping date even before 26,000 BC.

संवत्सरं शशयाना ब्राह्मणः व्रतचारिणः |
वाचं पर्जन्यजिन्वितां पर मण्डूका अवादिषुः || 1

Frogs, who were sleeping for past year, start croaking as dedicatedly as a brahmin who has undertaken some vrata to please the rains.

This also signify, people then used to consider arrival of rains as mark of beginning of new year.

I agree entirely with you and with several of your other points in your post which I don't explicity quote. But do you see where it leads us if we start equating God X = rain = cloud = monsoon = beginning of year and juxtapose it with Animal Y = asterism Z and feed it into the planetarium software of our choice.

In my opinion, this is one more pointer towards Indic home of those who composed Shruti literature.

The place of composition of the entire vedic literature has never been in doubt. It is indeed India. The question is that does the Vedic language have roots that go even older and outside India.

[RajeshA]

The question is that does the Vedic language have roots that go even older and outside India.

Considering that no scientific evidence was ever provided for such a scenario, this speculation would be akin to postulating something one may see in the movie Prometheus.

[member_22872]

I need help from someone who knows what to do with PERL scripts. The link is here
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/quantmethods/

shiv garu, output from get_IE_distance script:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?co746mks5my3ln1
He mentioned that he is enclosing a script to get figure6, but I couldn't find any. Secondly I have also uploaded output from make_matrix script here:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?vigss8jd75mskb2

added later: link urls changed.

[RajeshA]

venug ji,

often on scribd, one has to upload a file if one wishes to download another. Perhaps mediafire, filefactory, etc. may be a more suitable choice for hosting.

[member_22872]

Rajesh ji, understood, let me try to put the files on of them you mentioned.

Rajesh j, shiv jii, change urls, please try and let me know if they don't work.

[ManishH]

The point I am making here is that the presence of a written script, and even a large body of people who are able to read and pronounce that written script is still insufficient to deduce the exact phonology. Even knowledge of the alphabet is no guarantee of knowledge of phonology.

Who claims to know the exact phonology. There are known knowns and known unknowns.

Take the case of Hittite. This was an unknown language found written in Akkadian cuneiform. Akkadian was deciphered primarily because it was found in bilingual or trilingual scripts with Old Persian. Old Persian was deciphered primarily by its association with Sanskrit.

Have you tried picking up a book on Hittite decipherment and check what claims are actually made. Eg. take the book by Dr. Craig Melchert - one of the experts on Anatolian and Hittite cuneiform texts, titled "Hittite Historical Phonology". One of the first unknowns it mentions is the lack of contrast between voiced and unvoiced consonants. One of the very good knowns are the vowels in Hittite - chiefly due to Greek inscriptions mentioning Anatolian proper names.

If there is a specific phonetic issue you have that you think is fictional, do bring it up. But you are intent on painting all of Hittitology with a wide brush of 'fake' instead of spending time to critically examine the methodology of phonetic reconstruction.

the art (not science) of philology conjures up timelines by saying "This sound came earlier and that sound came later".

Philology has nothing to do with sound change. The latter comes in the purview of phonetics and phonology.

The sounds are themselves are guessed and cooked up, and the timelines made out of that cooked up sound. The level of self delusion here is mind boggling. The sounds themselves are pure guesswork.

Please pick a specific inscription, a specific sound and demonstrate why it is incorrect. It's easy to flay your hands calling anything that is inconvenient as fake.

[Atri]

RV_07.018.17.1{27} ādhreṇa cit tad vekaṃ cakāra siṃhyaṃ cit petvenā jaghāna
(with the ram he killed the lion)

Ok. so this looks like the lion being killed (must be Leo setting on the western horizon) and Aries up in the sky. Call in Nilesh ji and I'm sure he'll feed 1. and 2. into the planetarium software to give an eye-popping date even before 26,000 BC.

Manish Ji,

I will respond to your post in detail later. This is just a quick response..

1. the verse you quote, if my memory serves me correct, is in reference to Sudaasa defeating confederacy of invading ten kings in Daasharaadnya war (war of ten kings).

2. I think, AFAIK, the concept of zodiac (raashi) was not used by Indians. they almost always used Naakshatriya system instead. so this can't be interpreted this way.

[brihaspati]

The fake-ness lies in not saying exactly how many Hittite tablets have been recovered - based on which the language was reconstructed, the wide variation in the sample size for various phonetic bits reconstructed, and the fact that the supposedly more "sure" conclusions are actually based on supposed reference to "Hittite" names in other "languages", especially Greek - which again is very very controversial in its own archaic forms. The contemporaneous Greek for Hittite - is again "reconstructed". Do keep in mind that archeology says Hittite culture flourished in the early to middle Bronze age, and they were practically untraceable after the 3000 ybp.

The other Hittite interpretation comes by comparing references in the Egyptian scripts - but that is not prolific either, and early or even late dynastic Egyptian pronunciations are a bit dicey too - since the phonetics has been reconstructed based on late Hieratic comparisons with known Greek etc, in the Greek occupation period. In fact only the consonants can be assured to an extent - the interposition of vowels is a guesswork-driven by modern experience and then of-course that ubiquitious "back-calculation".

But I am still worried about the "dog+ram" problem! If they are allegorical, and every allegory must be based on "real life experiences" - then the he-goat must have been experienced to be talking Sanskrit in real life. How can you take them to be symbolic? If they are symbolic - then they must stand for other real-life entities? When claiming taht they are "symbolic" does it not become the responsibility of the claimant to also provide what they symbolize? Or is the semi-committed, semi-fudging "oh there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns" historical-linguist hand waving acceptable here too!

[RajeshA]

The data points that I remembered and hence I looked the astronomical bit up is the fact that
(a) first noted global level melt-water rise indication is around 19,000 ybp.
(b) 19,000 ybp is taken to be a turning point for insolation increase and beginning of the gradual strengthening of the monsoon [the higher resolution data indicates iniensity peaks at around 16000 ybp and 13000 ybp supporting the 3000 y lag theory].

The varsha == year [as well as precipiation] makes sense only in the monsoon sense, and could have been noted at that period as also perhaps a significant change from the previous aridity of the 21,000 - 19,000 ybp range. Some people have arbitrarily set "spring" as Vedic year start - and used Garga's shloka to set Pleiades rise in the 4400 ybp range. But "varsha" makes no sense in that context.


Thus there could indeed be some significance in verse on ribhus - but the period is much older then than now anticipated and later than 26,000.

brihaspati garu,

Nilesh Oak ji also comes to the same conclusion in his book (which I sent you) in "The Fall of Abhijit". Summer Solstice marks the beginning of the year!

[brihaspati]

Why is it that archeo-astronomy has to be dubbed "juvenile" ? Becuase it fills up the gap between known unknowns and unknown unknowns by a fit of imagination just as historical linguists do? Both have their paradigmatic peer groups, both have their "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns", both are trying to interpret scarce data, and both are hamstrung by lack of independently verifiable contemporary sources.

By that same argument, historical linguistics becomes juvenile too.

[RajeshA]

But I am still worried about the "dog+ram" problem! If they are allegorical, and every allegory must be based on "real life experiences" - then the he-goat must have been experienced to be talking Sanskrit in real life. How can you take them to be symbolic? If they are symbolic - then they must stand for other real-life entities? When claiming taht they are "symbolic" does it not become the responsibility of the claimant to also provide what they symbolize? Or is the semi-committed, semi-fudging "oh there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns" historical-linguist hand waving acceptable here too!

Actually ManishH ji did say that dog and goat could be clans. Perhaps he can give us some reason and reference why he thinks that that may be the case.

I think Nagas have a solid history of being considered people, although the word denotes 'serpents'. Similarly perhaps one would have to find how dog and goat also refer to people. Since dog and goat are spoken about in singular and not plural, possibly we are talking about a singular member of the clan of dogs and a singular member of the clan of goats. Perhaps it is possible for ManishH ji to state how in the text, these two persons - Dog and Goat from two different clans came to be referenced. The singularity seems to be a mystery that also needs to be explained in the text.

If in any article I were to write 'the American and the Russian" referring to two people, then beforehand I must have clarified in the context, how I came to be introduced to these two people or to share a setting/narrative with these two people.

Indeed a mystery, compounded by the fact that considering the dog and the goat alternatively as asterisms is out of the question!

[Nilesh Oak]

2. I think, AFAIK, the concept of zodiac (raashi) was not used by Indians. they almost always used Naakshatriya system instead. so this can't be interpreted this way.

Atri, Ji,

The Jury is out on Zodiac (Rasshi). We know that Greeks are not the originators. Definitley Egyptians has them (however)and if they developed on their own, borrowed from someone else (or even a joing collaborative effort with other culture).

Is is true Indian literature rarely mentions it. None in Mahabharata. Ramayana has them (e.g. Karkata lagna). My speculation is that this could be part of commentary by later author (analogus to we telling a westerner.. where is Kurukeshtra? near Delhi or Delhi, or Where is Hastinpuar/Indraprasth? Answer: Delhi).

Vishnupurana and few others do use Raashi, interestingly timing of vishnu purana estimated from internal refernces (Rashi at certain astrononmy cardianl point) take us back to 1600 BC.